A Mother's Love
by SpicySpaceBabe
Summary: The beginning and the end for the life of a Galran officer. Ezra, the Engineering CO on a warship meant for scouting and exploration takes in a young alien from the gladiator ring's suffocating hold. She has such high hopes for him. (edit) This fic does contain graphic sequences of violence. If it bothers anyone, I'll put the rating up to "M".
1. Something of a Beginning

**This fic is going to be a collection of one-shots that i have written in my phone and does contain elements of other writers' headcanons. I do not have any rights or ownership to Voltron and the only thing I do own is Ezra. Thank You.**

Before the accident, Ezra had been the head officer of Engineering on board her commander's ship, having always had a knack for fixing and making things. Her talent, however, was not just limited to machines or personal projects, but to people as well.

The Gladiatorial Rings were a part of Galran life; a tradition and a way to satiate the instinctual need for violence in each person. It was entertainment and a portion of revenue that, while not significant, couldn't be ignored. It also brought other species into closer proximity to the hubs of the Empire. A smart ploy for commerce that even Ezra, who hated the games, had to admire. Ten thousand years of an adamantium strong empire didn't crumble with change, however. Flexibility was a must even with the mentality of aggression that her Emperor enforced. The rings were entertainment, yes, but also a method of weeding out the most resilient and clever of the prisoners for the purpose of putting them to work for the empire or for the Druids to have their fun with them.

Haggar, especially, loved to create weapons from Champions she favored.

This time, however, the reigning competitor was a well-known engineer. An engineer with extreme anger issues who was to be put to death for assaulting their guard, but well known for their potential in the field. They were an Ikyak, a very quiet species who preferred to blend into their surroundings and watch as life change and blossomed and withered away around them. They had, on average, six eyes per person and an impressive set of heavy horns atop a broad, thick neck and long, slim body. Usually, they were known as gentle giants and were favored by the upper rings of Galran society as protectors for cubs as an Ikyak's sense of parental aggression nearly rivaled a Galra's. And, it was unlikely anyone would be foolish enough to goad one of the giant's into physical altercation.

Obviously, this was untrue of whoever decided to goad this runt of an Ikyak, and, of course, the heckler was a Galran guard which the smaller male then attacked and nearly gutted resulting in the younger Ikyak's imprisonment and induction into the gladiatorial rings.

What a wild ride.

Ezra's commander thought that the head engineer of his ship could make something of the runt. The thought of a protégé made her slightly nervous, but Ezra knew she was up to the task. She just didn't quite account for the Ikyak's hatred of all Galra. It was understandable, really. Something Ezra couldn't relate to but could acknowledge and comprehend. It didn't mean she tolerated outright insubordinate behavior, however. Ezra was also known for her patience, a trait no doubt learned from a lonely childhood with parents who favored discipline over love, at times.

She'd never blamed her family for their outlook, really. After serving in the military as long as she had, she could see where they were coming from. That didn't mean she would give the same semi-cold treatment to her own cubs if she ever had any. Or the people around her.

After weeks of gentle prodding and kind mentorship, Ezra finally learned the Ikyak's name.

 _Natea_.

What a wonderful name.

Ezra really had cared for the kid, feeling like they were the obstinate brother they never had or a difficult child. She took the utmost pride in their accomplishments, rewarding them for every emotional breakthrough with whatever they wanted at the time, and always listened to their problems. She sparred with them often, and taught them how to really defend themselves from violence or verbal heckling. She could see the person he could grow up to be, and was satisfied.

Natea had become family to Ezra in the blackest recesses of space the exploratory ship they were on would travel. She had known that they still hated the Empire, still hated Galra, but she had really thought that perhaps they had cared for her as family as well.

She had been wrong.

After the accident, Ezra had learned her intuition had failed her. She trusted Natea, had refused to listen to the warnings of her comrade that he was still too volatile, she let him make a mile out of an inch, she was letting her deep compassion get in the way of her instincts.

Originally, she had thanked the universe that Natea hadn't been there. He had sat by her bedside as she recovered with his horned head in his hands. Even then, she had noted proudly that he was growing up to be strong and as tall as the average Ikyak could be. His horns curled elegantly, but were strong enough to bulldoze a grown Galra. He had grown a wonderful mane from the scraggly, patchy hairs he'd had. Natea had gained much more mass and was no longer the scrawny kid that she'd welcomed into her life not three yearly cycles ago. Ezra remembered thinking that if she were to die in the hospice bed, that she would have gladly done so knowing that she had raised such a strong individual in mind and body.

After the explosion in main engineering, and as soon as Ezra was able to leave intensive care, she wheeled herself down to the site to assess the damage and find the cause after Natea had fallen asleep again at her bedside. The absence of legs was ignored and, at this time, Ezra was too doped up to feel the real and phantom pains of her still healing body.

The room was closed off, but her rank allowed her to access the area with ease, even with her current crippled state.

What she found more than upset her. The wires had been shredded, important subroutines outright deleted, the coolant gel had been replaced with an explosive element with the same viscosity. They had been sabotaged. She had been ruined. She was absolutely livid and in her rage she realized she couldn't be trusted with herself at the moment. She'd never felt such strong emotion take over her body like that; blood rushed violently in her ears, her mutilated body shook, angry tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. A scream was building in her throat. Her fangs cut deeply into her lower lip in her attempt to keep her bellows of rage under check. She ignored the sting and rush of sticky purple blood as thoughts raced through her mind.

How could someone _do_ this? How could a Galra do something so despicable to their own people?!

This time, Ezra really did scream. She threw back her head and roared.

Thankfully, the rooms were soundproof, even with the extensive damage to the infrastructure. She was afraid to see anything more, afraid she would find worse things.

She remembered the difficulty the security teams had in opening the doors, supposing they must have been jammed by the intense heat. She agreed because it was possible if the heat was enough to melt the sensitive wiring. Ezra wondered now if the person who had caused the fire had locked the door, intending to trap the entire night shift engineering team locked inside with no escape.

They had succeeded. She was the only survivor.

Ezra forced herself to calm. It would not do for the Captain to see her so unraveled. She might have been seriously injured, but her temperament had not suffered quite yet. She needed her sanity.

The investigation was extensive and lasted well over seven lunar cycles.

In that time, Natea had been given command over engineering as Ezra was sent away for what was probably the last time. Her heart had nearly bursted with pride then that the intensely homogeneous culture of the Empire had accepted her Natea as a superior officer aboard a well-known flagship. Her eyes had grown misty when the Captain told her, and thanked him so much for believing in the skill of the boy she had raised as a dutiful officer. However, she couldn't come back to duty, not with missing limbs. It was a tearful goodbye, Natea not saying a word and not meeting her eye. Ezra had supposed he was simply embarrassed by his own tears.

She told him it was okay to cry, and he really had broken down then, clutching her waist as she sat slumped in her chair, her running her wickedly clawed fingers through his mane and rubbing the bases of his horns.

After she left and had settled into her deep depression at her family home in the Main system, Natea had been quietly arrested without public knowledge.

And, as Ezra had been honorably discharged, she had been out of the loop. When the letters he had sent to her every week had stopped abruptly, she figured he had become too busy to keep up their correspondence. She didn't blame him, she had done that a few times as well when she was just starting out as a senior officer before she had gotten used to the work load.

The Empire would have told her of his death, most definitely, so she didn't worry.

Not a few weeks after she had been taken in by Haggar for her conditioning and prosthetics did she see him again. Her son, whom she had remembered fondly, was in heavy chains. She would have asked why if it hadn't clicked so suddenly in her mind. She felt her heart drop into her gut and her mind buzz violently.

Betrayal and shock made her tremble, the phantom agony of her legs suddenly came back full force and this time, she couldn't compose herself in front of an audience. She hadn't been fitted with legs yet, but if her waist hadn't been strapped to her wheelchair, she was sure she would have lunged at him.

She wasn't sure what she would have done after that, but did recall the shame in his many eyes. She ignored it and raged at him, her chair rattling with the violent motions of her body.

 _"How could you do something like that!? I_ _ **trusted**_ _you, I_ _ **cared**_ _for you, and you tried to_ _ **kill me**_ _!"_ She lunged again, only to be snapped back into the seat of her chair by the elastic band around her waist, "I _loved_ _you_ as a son! I loved you as a _son-_!" She choked on her next sentence and sobbed, her face contorting painfully as she screwed her eyes shut, her lips stretched flat against her sharp teeth.

Haggar watched from the shadows, an indiscernible look in her eyes. Natea wouldn't look up. She took him by the horns and forced him to look at the woman that had believed so greatly in him, that had trusted him, had cared for him.

He couldn't speak. Couldn't bring himself to after his old mentor's display of emotion.

She got no explanation from him that day.

Then, Haggar remade her.

Ezra's last display of strength and loyalty that would allow her into her new line of duty was to meet her former ward in the Gladiatorial ring.

He pleaded with her, begged her to not do this. He didn't want to hurt her and it costed him his life. He saw the cold of her expression, and yet still couldn't fight back. Couldn't fight someone he had secretly called mother. Couldn't fight because of the heavy guilt and shame weighing down his heart.

Ezra was empty as she looked down at the cooling body of someone she had loved so deeply. He had lost most of his fat after his reintroduction into the gladiator life, leaving lean muscle behind. Deep scars cut into his frame. He's lost an eye or two from what she could tell from the thickly spraying blood of his throat, neon blue creating arcs of electricity from the deep laceration of his artery.

But, she did not cry with the swelling emotion in her chest. Her emperor and caregiver were watching her performance.

She would not disappoint.

 **Welcome and Hello! I wrote this at a wild time and wasn't sure if i wanted to post it but I'm happy I did! Thanks to an anonymous reviewer, I became aware that I hadn't put any character tags lmao thanks btw. There will be another chapter and it will probably be soon, but I'm just not sure with this still being the holidays. Thank you for stopping by!**


	2. Emperor Slave

If there was someone who definitely didn't deserve the pain they had been given in life, it was the Champion. Ezra had seen him often in the company of Haggar and felt the tugs of concern and pity at her deadened heart. Haggar loved her experiments, sure, but the witch's love was stifling and the punishments of disobeying her were dire.

Ezra's prosthesis ached in memory. Haggar had given Ezra legs, but the time Ezra had spent under the High Druid's care was a screeching, agonized blur. Her recovery was remembered in flashes of sprayed royal purples and bleeding violets. When she woke, she was presented to her Emperor as a weapon. She enjoyed that role. She was given purpose again and could serve her emperor with efficiency.

Ezra protected and served any who her Lord asked of her to. She watched after him when not on assignment, though he didn't need it. She enjoyed the occasional attention he would lavish, though lavish might be too strong a word, on her when little was occurring. She had shadowed Haggar on many occasions at his request, but was mostly given assignments with high ranking Generals or the children of those houses. Sometimes she was given to a Druid other than Haggar, but she never learned their names.

Or, perhaps she had, but simply couldn't be bothered to remember it.

The choking smog from the accident and the months spent in depressive isolation along with her recovery at Haggar's hands had probably affected her brain negatively in the memory retention department.

So, even though she was a dutiful follower to Emperor Zarkon and to Haggar, she still felt pity for the young human amongst the Galra. He reeked of death. He had not yet learned his place. A long gash was across his face, now. The bone of his small nose bruised and swollen. He had an arm that would soon be similar to her legs; state of the art tech infused with Galran infected quintessence. He must be favored by the emperor, as well.

He was a cute little thing, that was for sure, and his matches always left a spark of admiration in her belly and a soft upturn to her lips. One such as he had surpassed everything her masters gutted him with and it surprised her as well as many others. Humans must be a stubborn, resilient species... However, Ezra had heard that some of his species had been taken with him, but were sent to the work camps on Ir'Vad IV. They were sent there for weakness. Perhaps he was exceptional even amongst his own species.

How lonely that must be.

Ezra couldn't quite remember a time where she was not an assassin and guard to the higher circles of society. The memories of her family's farm were fading in the cold. Her mother's face was blurry, and her father was but an outline, the scents of home were faint. She remembered thickly woven tree lines that ate the sky, but nothing else.

Odd.

Maybe when Zarkon gave her leave, she would return to her parents. She doubted that so long as she lived, though, that she would ever be given leave. Her version of shore leave used to be wherever her commander's ship was docked and surrounded by her rowdy engineering team. Now, it was any quiet moment she was able to steal from the gaze of whomever she was protecting. Zarkon rarely slept, though she didn't mind him much. Haggar only slept after she had eaten, and the generals slept often. Generals would never be more favorable than her masters, however. Haggar may have been brutal, but she was an easy motherly substitute and all that Ezra knew for that role. Zarkon was her emperor and more. She would gut herself if he but asked, slain thousands if he wanted it of her, or lay herself out in supplication for him to crush under his boot. But, he never did. He was not soft with her, but did show a certain affection to her.

Funny that Ezra knew that she would never have given someone that deadly loyalty before her mother's colleagues had come knocking. They had taken her to Haggar and she remembered the vicious torrent of hope that had gripped her heart when she found that the Witch was able to give her her legs back.

Ezra wondered if she dreamed before.

It didn't matter now, though. This was her life. This would be her life until her masters released her of it. She would only be stopped by death or by victory, as was the Galra way. So, when her Lord asked her to shadow the small Champion, she did not complain, nor was she compelled to disobey. She was curious about the smaller being, and a little worried that she might lose him under foot.

But, again, sometimes Ezra was ordered to watch the children of high ranking families. She was used to smaller beings, but not so used to actually interacting with them. Ezra did recall that the children of those families were on two sides of a spectrum; quiet and reserved, to utterly spoiled and prone to violent tantrums. The kind that were shrill and pounded the skull like a hammer to a nail. It was usually the smaller ones, however. Was size connected to temper?

She dearly hoped not. The Champion was mighty and had the potential for even greater than what he was now achieving, but he was quite short.

Nevertheless, Ezra looked forward to guarding and caring for the Champion in Haggar's absence.


	3. A Lull

**Hello! And welcome back. Y'all have probably noticed that these are following a chronological order but are in a more vignette-like style. I've had a lot of stories and one-shots in my phone's documents for a really long time now but only just started to post them anywhere and I've been a long time user so I thought I'd test the waters here and then post them somewhere else. Anyway, thanks for stopping by! And I hope y'all enjoy!**

The Champion was a quiet person. Outwardly, but not inwardly. Ezra could see the torrent of negative emotions swirling underneath his skin in the flex of a jaw muscle, the slight twitch of his left eye. He was quick to react to any violence, and loud noise.

She had been that way, too, once.

She'd felt beyond betrayed and knew agony, then trusted her caretaker to give her the comfort she needed. Ezra supposed that progress was agony, as well. She appreciated Haggar now, however. Loved her as her own mother, in fact.

Ezra's true mother was a blur.

She watched the little being pace in the room he shared with the Witch; who was away for an indefinite amount of time. The witch knew very well that the two individuals in that room were either too scared or too broken to try anything major while she was gone. Shiro, being still so new, was the one who felt terror at the prospect of punishment. Ezra, being used to the full thudding pain of kicks and the slicing torture of dull knives, had no fear of death. She was a finished product and incredibly loyal to the Empire. Shiro was still in the works if the long scab cutting boldly and darkly across his pale face was to go by. The bruises had faded, but the skin around it looked tender. Ezra was no medical officer, but the injury would surely scar. He hadn't look at her yet, too worried in the wake of his Malch leaving on such a long trip and many other things, as well.

Ezra studied everything closely. Her eye for detail would have made her a great artist had her temper not been so short when she was young. It had been something she regretted not keeping up with as Ezra, the CO of Engineering. As Ezra, the Emperor slave, she could afford no regrets. She was a prized weapon. Just as Shiro would be if he survived Haggar's conditioning. Perhaps he would even be pitched against her in a spar or two to test his ability. A bolt of energy traveled to length of her spine at the thought of it. She'd seen him in the rings. There was incredible potential there, and Ezra wanted to test it to its breaking point. Perhaps it was sadistic, but Ezra loved fighting and it was a jarring contrast to her laid back manner. Usually, she was content to lounge wherever her masters ordered her to be; whether that was at Haggar's side, in the grand rooms of the Emperor, or whoever else she was protecting. It was an outlet for the foreign anger and manic energy that balled up in her belly; unreleased and hidden from prying and magically inclined minds.

Shiro was no different. Though, Ezra thought with a flicker of annoyance, he wouldn't give her the same attention as her masters did during times of calm. She brushed it off, though. She wasn't a cub anymore.

Not that she could remember what being a cub was like.

"What were you like before?"

The question startled her, the high timbre of his voice reminding her of a shadow in her memory. A child, perhaps? Silence had been the Champion's approach to her protection, and now here he was, standing just out of the reach of her arms in case she struck out at him. Smart alien. If she had been startled enough she might have accidentally hurt him. He must be the same way or have found it out from trial and error. He'd been pacing almost manically for the past several hours; all practice ranges had been booked, he had read all pertinent data to himself and his studies, and activity had been so very slow in the center of the Galra empire in terms of action or excitement that even Ezra, the shining paragon of patience and control, was feeling the growing unrest of stir-frenzy. Champion had been disallowed from fighting in the ring when Malch was not present, and the inactivity was starting to wear him thin. Ezra wondered if Haggar had ever considered taking the little being on walks.

But, his question. What a loaded query; was he asking for her sake, or his own? Or to simply to know his protector a little better? He didn't seem devious enough to use what she could remember against her, but, Ezra couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye. She didn't want him to know that she could remember little, if anything at all. It was her one shame; that she let all of her memories pass into forgotten memory. She worried he would see that as weakness, that someone so resilient would see her so broken or that he would use the weakness to prove himself better. He had also been twisted by Malch, or rather, Haggar. Ezra could see it in his eyes, in the deep hollows of his cheeks, the frantic twitching at his fingertips. Ezra saw it in herself, as well. But it was subdued. She was subdued.

She knew she wasn't alright, wasn't herself in the disconnect of mind from body and heart from soul, but couldn't find the will in herself to care much when her masters praised her for her behavior with affection and attention. The Champion wasn't like that. She saw it in his eyes, in the flickering control of his violence and anger; he was a mad dog circling the peg of its chain. One day, he would break. He would still be strong, still himself. She broke quietly, he would be explosive.

She wanted to answer as honestly as she could. She liked the Champion and thought very highly of him in terms of her broad yet small world. She decided to trust him. In the voice she had learned during her rehabilitation under Haggar, smooth as silk, danger and compassion and emptiness laced into each word, she confessed that her memory had gone entirely hazy and muddied. The voice she possessed now was of Ezra, the Puppet, Servant, and Assassin. It was nothing like the motherly and roughhewn timbre of Ezra, the "Beloved Commanding Officer"; a title she had seen in a public alert. The alert had been her obituary, and the memory of it only solidified the knowledge that because she was officially dead, there would be no home to go back to. This was her home. The Empire was her home.

She sighed, placing the PAD she was working on onto the wall desk and swiveled the chair she was lounging in to face him. "A few too many electric shocks to the brain, little one." It felt like a lame finish, a retreat. Ezra could feel her regrets and her shame crawling under her skin, but she couldn't quite place instances to the feelings. When she became overwhelmed, she merely blended into the deep violets and glowing orchids of the Flagship's hallways or into the lush apartments her emperor frequented. The memories of home were fading away.

Shiro understood the sentiment all too well, though he didn't know that the impassive galra was suffering the same troubles. To him, she was unnaturally stoic. He was almost mad with worry. He was beginning to forget everything. His family, his years at the academy, the faces of his friends...God, he was ready to rip his hair out in frustration. He didn't trust Ezra, she was too close to the higher ups, but he did know that she wouldn't lie to him or purposely hurt him. After all, she was protecting him while Haggar, his Malch, was away. She followed every command to the letter and then some. Shiro envied her seemingly permanent calm.

Shiro snarled low in his throat. He needed- God he didn't know what he needed. He- No. He had an idea. "Can you put a writing program onto my PAD?" He'd gotten that sentence out perfectly, Ezra noted with dulled pride. It seemed that all she felt was muted and grey. It was a part of the conditioning to keep her calm in times of distress, but it had transferred into every other part of her new life.

The Galran furrowed her thickly furred brow ridges, twisting her upper body to face him, head tilting in confusion. "You mean Malch didn't put one on yours?" Odd that she wouldn't if she was taking the little Alien as an apprentice. Then again, if Malch didn't want him to remember anything, if she beat every good thing out of the little human, Ezra didn't want to create any issues with Champion's conditioning. A traitorous voice in her head asked her if that was what she really wanted and Ezra brushed it away, untroubled, as she did most things.

Takashi flinched. He hated calling the Witch that title though he did it often in his thoughts. "No, she didn't. I am using paper for lesson and PAD restricts to whatever she wants on it!" His words were stilted oddly, the language foreign and thick on his tongue. He waved his PAD in the air for emphasis as he said it, almost losing it in the still slick, unfinished fingers of his new prosthetic arm. It was a prototype, and, unfortunately, a replacement for his dominant arm. He felt useless even with the new addition, or rather the replacement, for his missing limb. His tentative grip on Galran created an even more intense ball of frustration. His current guardian spoke only high, militant, and low Galran (the low form was usually curses) and Takashi had found that he could barely speak to her without sounding like a child, and his feelings of helplessness grew.

He'd never get away if he couldn't even learn the language of his captors.

The thought of escape brought a sharp pain through his skull that he ignored and the embarrassment of his toddler's handle on the language that flowed so easily from the Beasts around him made his cheeks burn and tears to gather in his eyes. He wasn't sure why, though. Why should he care at all? He hated them. All of them. Yet, he still looked to the Witch for reassurance and praise and felt shame that he might sound stupid in front of his temporary guardian. He wrapped his arms around himself, PAD still in hand as he shrank in on himself, and grew even more despondent at the stark difference between his flesh and metal arms; one yielding and warm, the other cold and hard. They had taken much from him.

Ezra rumbled low in her throat, ignoring the cringe from the smaller being and thinking of the possible ramifications if she did something that Haggar would not like and subsequently shrugged off the momentary worry. Whatever happened would happen, and Champion could not possibly continue his lessons in Galran on something as archaic as paper. Besides, there was little that could be done to her now that she would acutely feel even with the benefit of druid magic. She was completely loyal and the Witch, as well as the Emperor, knew this. With the assurance of her servitude, they trusted her judgement for her honesty despite being centuries older and her status as a servant and assassin. She wasn't ambitious, conniving, or defiant. Not anymore.

Her compliance with the human might also have something to do with the stricken expression on his face and the unhealthy pallor of his skin. Something familiar yet foreign welled up in her chest at how pitiful he looked, and the desire to draw him into her arms was strong, but she held back knowing that he wasn't a child. He wouldn't appreciate the comfort or pity.

Her hand left her side, long fingers unfurling to receive the tiny PAD the Champion was quick to place in her much larger palm. Malch must have commissioned a cub sized one for the little alien and the great differences in their size was stark when the evidence of it was laying in her palm. It had looked large in his hands, but in hers, it looked impossibly small and when she began to mess with it, she had to be careful with the wicked points of her claws or she would have pierced the screen. Then she'd really have a problem...Champion could always borrow her own, she supposed.

When she was done hacking into the system to remove a number of restrictions as well as downloading a writing program, Ezra handed the minuscule PAD back to Champion, and the spark of something she couldn't quite name was obvious as it ran its course through her charge, and the small smile that he gave her felt something like a thank you.

Ezra couldn't have been happier to do it and the warm glow in the pit of her chest woke something fiercely protective. Under her care, Champion would be the safest he had ever been.


	4. Home Life

**Holy Fuck I dont kno what that all that corrupted text shit was but i am SO SO SORRY LMAO DAMN anyway hello friends! I am back after season two and dying. There are no spoilers and you actually get to meet Ezra's mum and Dad in this installment! Sorry for the wait, school's been a bitch of a thing.**

Ezra had _loved_ to dream as a cub. She loved to see the clear, impossibly open skies of her home system, adored the untainted view of space right outside of her childhood home. Her life had always been one of vibrant purples, deep blues, and the opaque reds of the rivers that ran behind the façade of the modest house. Growing up, her favorite things had been harvesting that year's crop, the smell of roasting Tlaxca, and the glow of her mother's lamps hanging from the knarly branches of the Zyriuy tree contrasting with the permanent, bio-luminescent nightscape of the fifth planet from the sun. When she had been active duty, it seemed that each day was another one crossed off of her calendar until it was finally the first day of leave and she could go home. On the times she couldn't, she surrounded herself with her staff as well as her fellow commanding officers as they spent the majority of their leave in seedy bars and nightclubs.

But on this visit home, it was not so enjoyable. She was stuck, now. No room to breathe or laugh. She could not run along the thick grain fields of the valley area, could no longer climb the grand trees of the jungles not a sector over, and could no longer serve her empire as she wished.

No legs. Useless. An accident that could have easily been prevented had she remained vigilant. If only she hadn't been so damn trusting of her staff...

In her mind, it was her fault. She was the commanding officer. Those deaths were on her. Ezra was the only survivor of an explosion in the main engineering room during a rebel assault on her commander's warship. Her entire night shift team had died fiery, suffocated deaths while she got out without some necessary appendages and her lung capacity. The Empire would see her wounds as honorable; she got injured gravely and yet lived through the unbearable flames as her fur was fried and melted off, her flesh bubbling and every nerve aching fiercely as she desperately tried to put out the fire. She called for her team with no answer and only just noticed the falling support as she tied off all electrical systems apart from the catastrophic cascade failure.

If she hadn't of done that, the entire ship would be dead in the water amongst the blackest reaches of Space, too far away from the nearest Outpost for help. The crew would starve or be forced to use the emergency escape pods. This was her duty now. She would _not_ lose any more lives than she already had! The fire was dying, she had called for backup and cleanup teams as well as medical support, and yet, she stood there charred to the bone and promptly collapsed to the ground as the last little flickering flame was snuffed by air currents. The smoke had taken her breath as well as her strength, and her shaky legs and scorched body could no longer stand. Blood was in her eyes, and so she closed them while she lay nearly unconscious after her collapse.

The support collapsed as well. It crushed her rib cage and shattered the bones of her legs; blood flooded her lungs, every hurt hurt so badly all at once that there was a shocked nothing.

So she had lain there for an period in which there was no time, nor pain, nor thought and without motion before it all began again but the speed of which became faster and faster and faster and she tried to scream but choked on her own blood, creating gurgling, gut wrenching sounds as the air was crushed from her lungs and blood pooled around her, the initial impact sending the life giving substance across the floor in a fan-like array and over the blackened walls. The deep violet blood under her battered body made her feel like she was being sucked down into the floor! _Oh God, she was going to drown_!

Now she was home. She doesn't remember what happened after. The weight lifted, someone had petted her forehead, rubbed the ends of her ears soothingly, then nothing. Brief flashes of the sterile coal of a medical center, her mother, usually so untouchable and stoic wept as her father kneeled at the bedside in desperate prayer. Natea was there too, head in hands and long, blunt fingers holding her own charred digits gently. She missed _him_ more than her place as Head Engineer. She wished he could have come home with her, but always dismissed the thought when it reared its ugly head. He had a life now! A _career!_ Every time she thought of her Natea, her chest would swell with pride, and that great joy that it brought would brighten her otherwise empty and lifeless days.

Home didn't have the same feeling of warmth she had remembered so fondly when on duty. It was a cage now. Her lungs would never work as they once did, she was permanently confined to a wheelchair, and the only reason she was not allowed to die in honor of doing her duty was because of a promise Ezra's commander had made to her parents.

She could remember the smooth purr of her father's voice _, "Bring her home."_ There was threat in the undercurrent of his jovial tone, one that even _she_ , a bright eyed Ensign at the time, couldn't ignore.

Captain Druzak had kept his sincere promise.

He'd been a friend of her mother's, impressed with Ezra's quick thinking, unorthodox ideas, and skill with anything she put her long fingered hands to. It helped that she had a knack for engineering. He'd been the one to request her aboard his ship in the first place, and now she was being forced to _leave_. She could remember clearly the last time they spoke face to face, her body was still wrapped securely in white linens, her tall ears taped to lay flat against the top of her skull and wrapped tightly to prevent permanent mutilation of the delicate appendages. She could barely move her arms without agony ripping through her nerves and even on the highest dosage of pain medication, there had been an uncomfortable twinge.

He'd looked at her with pity as they said their goodbyes and it made her feel all the more ashamed of her weakness. The pain she experienced in the hollows of her chest would haunt her the rest of her life; an agonizing reminder of that day along with the bitter phantom pains in the empty lengths of her legs

It was a shame, too. Ezra had rather like her legs.

Prosthesis weren't out of the equation, but Ezra knew they took an embarrassingly good while to make to fit just perfectly to one individual and to tune it to one's own quintessence. There was no expense as accidents happened often, but Ezra's ship had been for exploration, and she would not make them wait. That was why she had requested Natea take her place as CO of Engineering. _He was brilliant!_ That was why she had taken him on when her commander had suggested it. He had been a project at first, and after less than an hour, she ended up practically adopting him in her own mind. His bitter and vehement protests at being placed under her surveillance were almost entirely ignored, and Ezra had been all too happy to gather up all the blankets she'd had to pile them up on the floor in her meagre living room for the Ikyak to sleep on.

She could die happy knowing that he would have a place he could thrive in, even if many Galra would question his legitimacy due to his species. It was the skill and work ethic that counted, and now, Ezra was counting each day for fear of losing her grip on reality. Idle hands did not make an idle mind, and she was so, _so_ tired of _crying._ She hadn't really looked at herself in the mirror for a time, but she was sure that she'd rubbed the black-violet fur under her eyes off or, at the very least, irritated her skin to inflammation.

Her fur had lost its luster over the course of the first few weeks of her stay and some white patches had begun to show up around her back ridge and at her temples. Her scales were grimy and her mane was matted in some spots. Her sight was dimmer, too. A result of the initial explosion, most likely. The flash of it had been violent. Everything was wrong and grey and she'd long since lost her taste for pleasurable things. She couldn't even enjoy the benefits of being home for the first time in literal decades; her father's cooking turned to a tasteless mush in her mouth, she felt like she was being swallowed in the soft mattress of her bed without her legs' balancing weight, she couldn't run in the fields or climb trees or help her aging parents with farm work!

This wasn't how she pictured being retired and the truth of her situation always felt like a lead weight in the pit of her stomach. She always felt queasy.

Her mother, Vzahn, and her father, Lebekk, were very supportive of her, knowing that she loved to work with her hands and mind as one, and tried to help her find something she could enjoy, but the depressive and ghost-like state she'd sunken into had made her listless and emotionally unresponsive. She was over three centuries old and she was sulking like an adolescent. It made her irritable and snappish. The Galran Military Police hadn't caught the perpetrator yet, and each passing day was another drop into the ocean of her building and repressed rage.

Things had begun to look up, however. Her father had asked around about office jobs for engineers on their home planet and had found a firm willing to look into her schematics for more efficient, preexisting inventions as well as her original innovations. Her mother had nearly cried again when they had told her the news over dinner and a broad grin had cracked over her face. Vzahn had later told her that she couldn't have been happier to see her cub's crooked grin and fucked up teeth than she had in that moment. The old General really had cried when Ezra had answered her with a breathy laugh instead of a scathingly sarcastic remark.

Shortly afterward, as Ezra had settled in with her new job as an architectural engineer, Vzahn had called up a few old colleagues within the empire, asking if any were willing to create a pair of legs for her _only_ cub, and when she had received an swift affirmative and informed Ezra of it, the younger Galra couldn't have been held back by the Emperor himself when she launched her legless body at her mother and father's waists, the two of them quick to catch her under her arms and hold her in a group hug. Vzahn, a former high commander, and Lebekk, an ambassador and saboteur, would have called in every favor they had ever built up during their years of service to make sure their cub had the best life they could offer, and every day Ezra became more aware of just how much her parents had cared for her in their own way. They were still her cold and generally distant progenitors, but they did care for her. The warmth she gave to them and what she received in return had begun to heal her spiritual wounds. Ezra had even begun to think that she could live on, even if they never found the cowardly murderer.

She couldn't wait to share the news with Natea.


	5. Mother and Father

**An bit of an interlude introducing Ezra's parents a little bit more than the previous chapter and fleshing the story out a little more than just following Ezra around. I hope y'all enjoy!**

The cold of space cut through the thick fabrics of their enviro-suits, biting the tips of their fingers, old bones and joints aching fiercely, breath a blinding fog against the darkly tinted glass of their respirator helmet. The empire hadst seen any reason to install heaters in their suits, never had save for the rich. But while the environmental suits were ages old, this was here, this was now. They were older, one more so than the other, but shucking off their mutual retirement was a necessity.

Their daughter, their only child, had been stolen by the very hands they had trusted to guide her; to heal her body. The decades had passed at an agonizing pace, and, with it, their hope. The house that had been occupied by the family unit for so long, so full of life and well-tended by hands that had refused to be idle despite the growing stiffness in the joints, now lay decrepit and empty. No one was present to upkeep the softly glowing lamps hanging low from the weepy tree branches that .brushed the dark soil. The crops would have been eaten by the local plant and animal life, and, Vzahn was sure of it, the homestead had once again been claimed by what was natural. She could see the great trees surrounding the little house, branches curling lovingly against the unnatural materials used in the house's construction. There was always such a stark difference between the slowness of retired life to the all-consuming blur of a career in the Hub. Nature was like that; slow and creeping, serene, but so _alive_. Maybe that was why Lebekk and Vzahn had loved it so much there.

It was so different from their respective home planets, each on both sides of the extreme. One, so blisteringly hot that even Vzahn's fathers with their age-thickened scales had been forced to seek shelter from the noonday sun. At least _her_ parents had treated her with _fondness_ , if not love. Vzahn thought them too old and gruff for that. Lebekk's mother had cast him out into the bitter and blizzardy snow drifts because he had been _small._ That was the crux of the sickness in the Empire, wasn't it? Part of it was leaving a child to die simply because of their size, no matter their health or how desperately they had asked you for love. But there was so much more _wrong_ , and Vzahn could only dream of another reality where she had turned the energy rifle in her hands on her commander or even Emperor Zarkon himself.

Lebekk had nearly erased much of his memory on his own planet. But he did remember how cold it was, the harshness of the terrain and the people. He'd been a runt, and his explosive nature had gotten him dumped out of the safety of the warm domicile into the bleak atmosphere of the dead planet he was too young to flee from. He'd run as fast as his shorter legs could carry him, sinking into the snow, refusing to cry out when he had fallen particularly deeply. He'd made it to another village eventually, thin clothes soaked through and nearly half of his fingers and toes bitten through with frostbite. He wasn't in possession of a full set of twenty.

Neither had grown up seeing any sort of the temperate lifestyle other colonies were privileged with. The novelty of the lush forest world they'd begun a life on had never faded. Vzahn had loved the sway of the trees and calm warmth that _sunk_ into your bones instead of an unbearably heat that _beat_ at you until you were burned to a crisp. Lebekk had loved the life that had rang in every bit of the land from the rich reds of the rivers to the deep blues of the grass and the glow of the local fauna. They'd made sure their cub had wanted for none of the things they had never had. Stability and the true love of parents who would take their child as they came, nothing more, nothing less.

When Ezra had been small, she'd thought that the trees were a smaller sky and that the blanket beyond was just a bigger sky that spaceships could fly in. She'd dream peacefully of distant planets and nights much like the ones she knew at home; quiet, serene, and warm. The little cub would come bounding down the stairs, limbs akimbo, small hands rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as she tried to tell her mama and papa about the dream she had the night before, clumsy tongue stumbling and hissing out the words in broken Common. The old Galran wondered now, whether or not Ezra still dreamed at all. Vzahn and Lebekk both were aware of what happened to those never seen again. The thought of it gave the veteran pause as a choke developed in her throat.

Lebekk, always so attentive and aware, slipped his broad palm into her thin one and squeezed. Her face was difficult to see through the tinted glass of the helm visor, but it wouldn't have helped anyway. Lebekk only came up to his mate's lower chest plating. H didn't have to look at her to know what she was thinking. They'd been a unit for many centuries past, and nothing could tear them apart now. The crimes of the Empire would finally have their reckoning and they would have their cub again.

She was grown, had been for centuries, but when Lebekk looked at pictures of Ezra, he couldn't help but see her as she was in centuries past. A gamine kid with a loud mouth, crooked smile, fast fists, and a hot temper. She hadn't suffered fools even when she had first begun her academic years, and Lebekk had lost count of how many times he and Vzahn had been called by the Counselors praising their Cub's good instincts and righteous temper, but asking that they teach her how to control herself and that it was odd that such reserved parents had such a rambunctious child. Then, that bright-eyed look she had when she was accepted into the Military Academy. She'd been so proud, "I'll show you what I can do, Papa! I hope I exceed all your expectations!" He'd laughed and ruffled her mane, reaching up a little higher than he would have liked, instead of telling her that there was nothing to prove. She'd grown up, but she had still been _so_ young.

He was already proud of her _, she didn't have to do this_. He and Vzahn loved her...they should have never let her go. But, it was too late. She'd gotten her stubborn mind onto it, and like the damn hound of a father she had, she'd never let go. Vzahn, at least, knew when to back off, to regroup. But, no. Both Lebekk and Ezra jumped headlong into any task given to them, attacking its challenges with unceasing vigor and passion, even if they hated it.

Something that the old Galrans shared, however, was that they had both been too trusting of their former superiors.

That was why Lebekk had flown he and his mate nearly into the center of a dying star in between two black holes. The empire would fall, and the rebellion of The Blades of Marmora would prevail. Vzahn had not been a High Commander without reason, and had only retired to be with her family as she aged in the slow way that her all her subspecies did. Lebekk had followed because he had grown bored with playing in the shadows.

Every base that was destroyed, every competent commander killed in the night, every spy implemented into the homogeneous sea of fodder, was a step closer to either finding their daughter alive or to her vengeance. And the unit would not fail. They had breathed the Galran ideology for centuries; nothing would stop them save triumph or death.


	6. In Foreign and Confusing Territory

**Hello it is I after nearly a month of inactivity and _w o w_ this gave me...a lot of trouble. I'm not sure if I want to keep it as canon for this ficlet but it's ok for now. **

**I'm debating with myself on whether I want Ezra to stay in the Empire or if I want her to interact with the Voltron crew in genre settings. Or I can do both. Idk but y'all will see soon what direction these one-shots are going! IF I Can Get My Ass In Gear :))))**

 **Anyway! Enjoy (hopefully)!**

* * *

The lights in the Castle of Lions were harsh, sterile whites that burned Ezra's eyes fiercely. She didn't say anything. Pain was temporary, anyway. Even if the brightness was blinding.

The terrible offender, illumination meant for the day dweller, was so unlike the soft glows of the shadowy Galran ships. If Champion saw her squint in discomfort at the garish brilliance echoing off of every gleaming and bright surface, he said nothing. _Or_ , as Ezra was quickly finding out, he simply didn't remember. The Alteans either didn't care or had forgotten about Galran sensitivity to light. Maybe that just wasn't a thing back then, Ezra just didn't know. But, she wouldn't complain. Couldn't, really. It wasn't in her programming.

It wouldn't keep her from shadowing him throughout the day, even _if_ he asked her to leave him alone; sight wasn't the only sense that Ezra had, after all. If she thought it would interfere with her ability to protect the human, then she would make a slight suggestion to the Adviser. He did not seem as...abrasive or as hateful as the Princess. Or as stubborn. Bitter, yes, and wary of her sudden presence, but not outright hostile to her. He'd actually been one of the first to accept her being there.

Then again, the Emperor Slave had only been here for one and a half of what the Champion called a "week." English was such a strange thing with its versatile uses of a word for two totally different things. Galran made sense, they had words that meant specific things with no other meanings unless it was a synonym.

Ezra was going to miss that.

Why was she here? They hated her for what she was proud of. Herself. No, she wasn't proud, that was a lie. Ezra couldn't and shouldn't be proud anymore. She was Galra and happy of that. Not of who she was per say, but her species was something she refused to be ashamed of. These were pups and their opinion mattered even less than she would have expected considering her sensitivity to Champion's moods.

She was content in her current skin, graying, white-streaked mane and all. She wasn't _old_ , per say, just stressed, though from what she couldn't quite recall. Champion seemed to suffer much the same. Whatever Malch did to her before she broke away, it wasn't good. She could feel her memories eating themselves or ripping themselves apart when she slept. Sleep used to be a blessed comfort. She would sleep on the plush couches in the Emperor's quarters knowing that when she did, she was safe and allowed to do so. She had her own quarters that she rarely used, but a nest of thick blankets had always awaited her there. Hell, Ezra had even had a pile stuffed away in Haggar's supply closet for when she would be assigned to, or off-duty with, the Witch. Generals gave her a guest bedroom closest to whom she was protecting and even that was preferable to what she had now.

They had given her a cot in an old, dusty cell-like room that obviously hadn't been touched since the Castle had been shut down. Possibly since before _even that_. It gave her flashes of when she had first signed up for the military. Life as an Ensign had been fun; full of pranks and practical jokes at their senior officers' expense. But, it had been jarringly different to her previous life on the admittedly cushy farm.

Coupled with the nightmares, the weight of her sin, the terrible bed, and the fact that it was way too far away from her charge for her own peace of mind, Ezra didn't sleep much anymore.

The food on the Castle Ship, however, was amazing. She'd subsisted on supplement cubes for several centuries since her military enrollment, and the memory of her father's cooking had faded long before the accident. What she had thought would be a permanent stay at her childhood home after the accident, had turned out to be much shorter than she expected, and she was torn away from wonderful food, again. The green goopy... _stuff_ that the Adviser and Yellow Paladin served was _heaven_ on a luxurious platter of a material that was no longer existing. She didn't want to know what was _in_ it, however. She just wanted to enjoy it while it lasted. Every time she lifted the spoon into her mouth, it was like nothing her taste buds could recall. She supposed Galra rebels had the luxury of actual food, as well.

The flavor changed every time; spicy, sweet, tart, warm, and some things she couldn't describe. Coran veritably preened when she complimented his cooking while the Paladins looked shocked; even Champion, though he'd had far worse to eat than she. Prison food wasn't as good Gladiator's food, and even then, it wasn't as tasty as cafeteria food. Maybe human taste buds were pickier than Galran taste buds? It didn't matter. Ezra felt that could stand everything else as long as she got regular meals like this.

Some of the Paladins were openly hostile to her; namely the Blue and Green. Though, she had the feeling the smaller was more dangerous than the other. Some were more cunning in their hate or suspicion, like the tiny Red Paladin who smelled of Galra but was not. At least. Not _yet_. The Yellow Paladin, though wary, had accepted her with nearly open arms after she had tentatively asked for a second helping of a dish he'd tried to make more acceptable to human tongues, and his wariness was still held strongly by the ever diplomatic and passive aggressive princess.

Champion gravitated toward the Altean, so Ezra would refrain from any amusing games at Allura's expense. The Princess was extremely clever, and a spark of something sadistic in the Galran had born a desire to test that quick thinking to its limit. Similar to her old desire to spar with Champion when he was first rising in status, but not as strong.

Champion had quietly accepted her presence, unsurprising for her knowledge of him. He was the tolerant sort with an ocean of patience and understanding. He had been on a short fuse when in captivity, but that was expected. From the other Paladins' surprise, however, it was out of character for what they knew of him. They said that he was plagued with nightmares he couldn't make sense of, though he hid it quite well and usually, anything Galran was a trigger for his daytime episodes. They called it 'PTSD'. Ezra supposed what he went through was quite traumatic, though she had gone through similar things. Then again, all that had happened to him was so fast, stolen from a world that was comparatively primitive to the Galra in technology, and it sounded as though slavery had been outlawed amongst their people. Ezra couldn't recall a time where she had truly been free. Maybe it was in those short decades as she lived with her parents? It wasn't something she could worry or find regret in due to her programming, but there was a shame that coiled in her belly that left her confused. She was loyal to the Empire. No, she wasn't, she'd betrayed her Masters for the human.

Her Masters. God, what had she done?! She had betrayed the Emperor! Or had she? After all, they _had_ asked her to watch Champion, protect him...but...he wasn't quite _Champion_ anymore. _Was he?_ The emperor had been uncharacteristically agitated when Champion had escaped, and the Pup hadn't even been with them for that long. What would he do to her when _she_ was found? Did she even care? Would Malch spare her the agony and simply kill her or draw it out as she was so _fond_ of doing? It wasn't a matter of "if", it was a truth of _"when"_. She _would_ be found, and the people she had held in the highest regard would kill her in whatever way they pleased. Ezra feared that she would let them.

She found herself taking faster strides to her destination, squinting with tearful eyes against the agony of the lights. She couldn't see and the building roar in her ears deafened her to her surroundings.

Something hard clipped her lower thigh, and though she stumbled a little bit to gain some distance, she didn't move much. The rush in her ears subsided, the spots in her vision still dancing faintly. She found herself bending down to help the smallest Paladin to her feet before her mind could catch up.

Her voice was thick when she spoke, hand outstretched to offer her assistance. "My apologies, Little One, I did not mean to inconvenience you." Tears still blurred her vision, but she had gone without it before. She'd lost the majority of her vision after the accident. The servos in her legs whirred impatiently for her to straighten them again as she waited, crouched down as she was, for Pidge to respond.

Her much larger palm was shoved away from the tiny human with little resistance on Ezra's part. She knew that it was unlikely that any help from her would be appreciated by the Little One, though, with her favored spot in Champion's circle, Ezra could not bring herself to test that spitfire personality.

"Get away from me, I don't need your help!" Pidge's voice was petulant, but she didn't care. She didn't trust the Galran as far as the _Princess_ could throw her and that was a pretty poignant comparison. Pidge tried to avoid Ezra as much as she could, and resented Shiro for welcoming the monster like he had. She couldn't understand it. It felt like betrayal, like a slap to the face. It wasn't that Ezra was Galra; one of the same species that stole her father and brother and that had broken her family apart and left her mother barely responsive. She understood that you couldn't blame an entire species for your sorrows, no matter how much she wanted to. It was that this particular Galra was considered the _shadow_ of the Emperor. Ezra had said so herself in a monotone and factual voice when Lance had asked her her connection to Shiro. Her tone had been unsettling enough, like she was rehearsing a line she had said often. Pidge's own guilt at leaving her mom completely alone was pushed away every morning she woke up. Maybe it was unfair to judge the female due to her undoubtedly brainwashed and groomed state, but she didn't know anything about her. None of them, except maybe Shiro, knew who exactly who she was. They knew she was the "Emperor's Shadow", but what that meant was lost to her. Shiro wasn't talking, much to her frustration and chagrin, and Ezra herself spoke rarely unless spoken to first. Though, Pidge had figured that if she asked, the Galran woman would answer in that same dead tone from that broad, unsmiling mouth.

She didn't even respond when Pidge had shoved her hand away, only nodding, and heaving herself up onto her slim feet again. The whir of machinery was loud in the quiet corridor, and Pidge's curiosity, though she still hated the other, was piqued. Prosthetic legs? It would make sense given that the impact her shoulder made against the Galra's thigh was nothing like flesh. There would probably be bruising later, but it was something the tech-head could ignore. Pidge knew from experience that the Galra had a certain give, though it wasn't like how humans were soft. More like how cats or lizards were soft. Haxus couldn't be left to rot in the underbelly of the ship, after all, and even though he and his commander had tried to kill them, it didn't seem right to leave him to the lower level cleaners. Pidge had buried him on Arus with Hunk's help. It didn't give her peace, but it did make her feel more human.

After what she'd done had hit her, and _hard_ , she couldn't leave him there. She just _couldn't_.

The human was giving her a once over, from wrapped feet and clothed legs to her high collared and loose fitting top. Ezra let her, and waited for her dismissal. It would be rude to simply walk away without asking the younger's condition, though it wasn't her duty. It would please Champion, perhaps. No. Not Champion. _Shiro._ He had asked her to call him Shiro. "Are you well, Paladin?"

Pidge didn't answer, her eyes locked onto the Galra's wet cheeks and darkly ringed eyes. "Were you crying?" She didn't know Galra could cry. Then again, she didn't know much about the Galra as a whole other that they were all some shade of purple or blue and that their phenotypical traits were very...diverse.

 _Was_ she crying? Was the cause the lights or her own growing instability? Ezra found she didn't know herself well enough. She couldn't lie, though. Not to one of Shiro's, as much as she wanted to. "Yes."

"Why?" Those glasses reflected the lights of the hallways spectacularly, shielding the majority of her expression from Ezra's still spotty eyes.

She decided it wouldn't hurt to tell a small lie, especially since she wasn't quite sure of _why_ she was crying, herself. "The lights are painful, even when dimmed." That cold look set the youth's face again, but Ezra didn't mind. Weakness could not be shown under any circumstance; even to allies. Ezra wasn't sure that her charge had even seen her like this.

Pidge found herself closing in again, and the momentary worry and curiosity sparked by the hopefully temporary guest was overshadowed by contempt. "Well, why don't you ask Coran to dim it even further, or better yet, stay down in the lower levels where the lights don't shine at all," She snapped, then murmured to herself as her short legs strode resolutely away, "Then it'll be like you were never here at all." Followed by quite a few choice words that Ezra had thought were only spoken when in pain.

But, of course, her pretty limited _human_ interaction was with Champion. Shiro. He rarely had outbursts of powerful emotion. Even in the ring, when he gutted and slashed and tore apart his opponents, every scream was planned, every roar and sidestep was like part of a choreographed dance. He created a character for the masses to cheer for; the bloodthirsty Champion who killed passionately and would probably eat a baby if given the chance. He wasn't really like that, as Ezra had found during her guardianship of him. He was thoughtful, willful, and, above all, _merciful._

Shiro was smart in that way, and would have made a wonderful commander had he stayed true to Haggar for a while longer.

Pidge was exhausted. It was too early in the morning and they'd been working almost nonstop to dodge the Empire. She was snappish, and she still hated Ezra, but filed the information about the lights into her mind for later. Just because she was a tech head and not a biologist, didn't mean that she couldn't find a way to convince Coran to lower the fluorescents a bit. She could complain in Ezra's stead that the intensity was causing headaches. With that in mind, the Green Paladin settled in for a power nap before she could go back to work.

As Pidge was settling down, Ezra had resumed her path to Champion's quarters with a more calm exterior _and_ interior, ready to set up a vigilance outside of his door. Unless he let her in, then she could steal his fluffy top sheet again and lay on that. Logically, she knew there was no imminent danger aboard the Castle ship, but the crawling anxiety under her thick skin told her otherwise. It was like the annoyance of a scale that was knocked loose, or ingrown fur, and it would not be let alone, demanding all of her attention and more.

Rubbing absently at her cheeks and deciding that she was not willing to suffer through the lights for any longer, Ezra knocked on Shiro's door, and when it slid smoothly open, Ezra slunk into the blessed darkness of the room.

Tonight, she would sleep.


	7. There Be Spies

Enter the machine, and you never leave. Body absent and separate, but the mind is still there. Festering in its forceful inactivity. Not inactive in the way that makes you dull and stupid, but in the way that every voice that tells you that _this is wrong, please don't do this,_ is silenced.

She sees it in him just as she sees it in herself. She saw it in the eyes of the Blade of Marmora members that cared to remove their helmets; a burgeoning emptiness. _Hopelessness_. The kind that infects you and eats your soul until you're a shell.

Like her.

Shiro got out, lost his memories, and regained his freedom in his newfound ignorance of self. But she saw what the others did not, and it was that with each passing day he was becoming more and more as she was. A cog or sprocket in the grand machine. He felt the exhaustive pull of the Witch's magic and said nothing. He didn't have to. It was the same here as it had been everywhere she had gone after being broken and remade; Ezra saw everything, but said nothing. Not unless it was necessary.

And it wasn't. Not yet.

When all was still, she contemplated the danger that Champion put his family in. He _might_ snap in the way that older soldiers do; a broken soldier could never be held down for long. She knew he felt like a broken toy, lost in his confusion, but expert in his ability to protect the other Paladins from worry with well-placed smiles or poorly executed jokes. Even the hot headed princess was fooled, though her impressive intelligence seemed to not matter much in the way of her very... _direct_ way of thinking.

Ezra had hidden in the shadows when the Blade agent had come knocking, had learned from him how Haggar's _dearest_ experiment had slipped from her tightly clenched fists. She was impressed, really. Listening to Ulaz's account had left her wondering just how many spies there were amongst her Masters' troops. The other Galra's forthcoming nature proved to Ezra of his lack of ill-will and unassuming presence. Besides, if his little tag session with the Paladins had taught her assassin's eye anything, it was that he had been playing with them more than anything.

She showed herself to him after his cuffs had been removed at Shiro's request, and the first faint feeling of surprise had stolen over her always unnaturally still frame at his _recognition_ of her.

She was _not_ a well-known face to the vast majority of the Empire. During her decades as the Empire-Slave, she had, almost constantly, been in possession of a sleek, black mirror mask. Featureless. Impassive. This meant that he had gotten particularly close to either Witch _or_ Emperor in terms of service. Perhaps he'd even worked his way through her former battalion… She didn't remember his face, though Ezra had never found it necessary to recall every Galra she came in contact with. She responded to immediate threats as they came. Long-term threats had always been made known to her through sub-commander, or rather, _Commander_ Throk.

With the destruction of the Third Fleet, there had been a great number of changes. Even the Emperor had been discomfited in his own ridiculously stoic way.

It didn't matter now, though. Neither of them could return to the Empire. One because he was a rebel cell member who had exposed himself and the other because she valued purpose over her own life.

Ulaz most likely knew of all that she was, as well as Champion, but Ezra was sure that he would say little to nothing about what they were to the Voltron crew. He knew the delicacy of the environment; four of the people on-board were arguably still _children_ , the princess had a ridiculously short temper and blundering gentility, and Coran was the sort of individual who had a great deal of pity to spare.

There is nothing a Galra hates more than _pity._ A close second is disloyalty, but that does not count for much in the company of _'traitors'_ , does it?

He hadn't been terrified, per say, at the sight of _her_ , but there was a panic in his body. A thrumming anxiety. _Had he been wrong? Was this all a ruse? Had he exposed his people to agents of the Empire?_

He hid it well, and she did not deem it necessary to placate him, only coming to stand in the doorway and allowing their shared charge to explain in whatever way he wished. She didn't care, and Ulaz did not want to...incite the princess' _wrath_ with any sudden movements. Such as; making a pretty good break for it. 'Knowledge or Death', so similar to 'Victory or Death'. But Ulaz had a cause and a purpose, and if he needed to warn his people of a possible threat, he would. Anyone who had seen the Emperor Slave in action would be... _uneasy_. She was unfaltering loyal and because of that, Ezra didn't blame him for his suspicions. Last he had seen her was most likely as a shadow trailing dutifully behind Zarkon as he went through the daily tasks assigned to him as absolute Ruler and Conqueror. If the male had been totally trusting of his situation, it would have been _beyond_ concerning for the older female.

Ezra had heard of the Blades briefly and in passing, but the secretive group had always eluded the Empire. Every century or so, they'd catch one, but the culprits had all been absolutely silent during their interrogations about their rebel cell. She'd even overseen one or two, learning everything and nothing from both males. They'd die for their cause, _'and rightly so'_ , a voice whispered _, 'for what is glory under the thumb of tyranny?'_ They were exemplary actors. The last one they'd caught had been in the ranks for three hundred years before they caught him, and Ezra was beginning to think that he'd _let_ them.

She'd only seen Shiro get truly irritated once, and it was in response to his comrade's continuing distrust of his liberator. _He_ was the one who had been held captive and mind raped for over a _year_. Not even Allura or Coran knew what the Empire was really like ten _thousand_ years later; something Ezra had tried to tell them after hearing Allura make a number of thoughtless remarks in response to her Ward's freezes and hiccups. The princess was still young, and still very bitter, and perhaps always would be the latter, but Champion's judgement had not led them too far astray for as long as team Voltron had known him. He needed time as well as an outlet. Trauma had broken him, but it had also made him _wise._

Ulaz saw Shiro as he had been, had seen him at his lowest, and as he was struggling to be what he knew of himself, once more. But he believed in him; told the gladiator there was still something good within him. Shiro had hung onto the other Galra's word like a lifeline; Ulaz was giving the human the reassurance and hope that she and the others could not.

She couldn't because of her own inability to connect her sickly apathy, cared for and nurtured for long and endless nights, with the still fresh agony of his own torture.

A leadership role was a difficult position to be in when the seed of savagery had been beaten into your core. There was a rabid dog bellowing in his chest, begging to be let out, clawing at his ribs, _snarling_ in his throat.

Not even Champion noticed when his eyes flashed gold.

When Ulaz had sacrificed himself, Shiro had been beyond distraught. Another death, one he probably saw as being his fault- _'I'm not good enough, Ezra! He died because I can't do my fucking_ _ **job**_ _!'_ -and of the one who had _freed him_ from his tormentor's clawed hold. He stuffed the majority of it down; it was another loss he would have to deal with in the pitch of his quarters. Alone.

He'd been distracted since then; temper shorter and energies off-kilter. One moment he would be fine, the next, it would be as though he couldn't stand the feeling of his own skin, clawing absently at his organic arm or the back of his neck. He'd snap and snarl before considering kindness or patience, storming off to the training room while muttering colorful strings of Galran curses under his breath. Aggression was boiling beneath the surface of his skin.

She wondered when it would reach its fever pitch.


	8. stranded without sunscreen

Well, here we are again, me a mess, and y'all reading these one-shots that I've cobbled together. The first few installments make sense with the story for this OC (of whom has taken over my sketchbook lmao), but contain vernacular that is no longer in use with what i'm building up thus far, so for my own comfort and as a reminder to myself, these go together, but not. They aren't entirely consistent with one another, and i wrote the first six while trying to stay in the literary groove of things. So thank you all for reading this! There are quite a bit of you if what stats tells me and I couldn't be happier that there is someone, or a lot of someones, who have taken time out of their day to read my shit show one-shot collection! **SO! THANK U!** Now, ONWARDS!

* * *

Ezra was made to serve. Failure was not an option, only victory, only efficiency, and every order she was given was carried to the very letter. She was a puppet hung by thick ropes. She was suffocating.

 _She couldn't afford to care._

The memory of home had begun to fade into the background. Originally, that was all that had kept her going. What was she running on now? She'd never be allowed back; she wasn't a _person_. Not anymore. She was a _thing_ ; broken and remade into a bloody wreck. It didn't help that she was ' _officially' dead_.

But, she was silent as the grave in her savagery. In her decay.

 _This_ wasn't failure, this wasn't even a _minor_ setback. She'd completed the job, not as _requested_ , but it was still _done_. After all, there's a huge level of futility in whining over how someone died. They're dead, nothing more can be done beyond that. To even try was to commit an atrocity...you could never be too sure of just _who_ had come back in the place of your loved one.

Her- _stolen-_ ship had experienced an...Unforeseen accident, leaving her stranded with no way to verbally communicate with her superiors and only the light of her distress beacon to keep her company. Well...that and the horribly scarred ecosystem along with its primitive peoples.

She'd been out here for a while now, though time was hard to keep in the long days and even longer nights, scrounging the poisoned, violated land for her meals and watching as all things around her were eaten away by maggots and rotted by the golden light of the sun this planet orbited. The planet was dead. _Little_ vegetation could survive in a soil so acidic and radioactive. The water was poisonous, and the animals were mangy. The locals were a hardy, cannibalistic species who toiled in the compact, rock-like sediment for barely edible roots from their difficult births to their too-soon deaths. They didn't even know that there was life beyond the blanket of their blazing sky.

They did once, but their own past ambition killed them all in one fell swoop, leaving the survivors with a limited and corrupt gene pool.

She could see the last village over the horizon, the disfigured, sun-burned faces of children poking their too big heads on their too small bodies out of the flaps of their rotting mothers' tents to squint in the dying light at her small camp. Ezra had found out early on that it was best if she stayed with the scents of death. The village was full of it. Other scavengers hated the putrid stench, and though it made her nostrils burn with the sickly sweet decay, it was safer for her to be this close.

The last adults were dropping like the flies that burrowed and vomited their eggs into their deadened flesh and the children wouldn't be too far behind.

It was sad, but inevitable.

This planet was so harsh that not even the empire would bother with taking anything from its lifeless husk. There was no spark here, no energy of life. It was dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

 _She refused to be dead._

Sleep was difficult. Had been for a long time. When she was finally able to slow down her racing mind and heart enough to even get on the brink of deep sleep, she would wake up not an hour or two later, the phantom spray of blood thick against her face, neck, chest and arms. There was always a deep, gut twisting sadness churning over in her chest, stuttering her hearts...

So, she didn't sleep except to take short naps when she couldn't hold her head up anymore.

The danger of the ravenous people over the hill didn't even phase the Galran woman. They were weak with physical deformities and starvation; she was at least three times the largest adult's size and surviving on nutrient packed, bland MREs.

The longer she stayed here, the worse the empty feeling in her gut became. The more insistent the buzzing static in her brain, the more _maddening_ the crawl of her skin got. Inactivity had never been kind to her.

Her fur had begun to fade from its deep violet. She didn't know if it was because she was in desperate need of a shower or from the harshness of the sun. _The sun_. Goddess, she _hated_ day-dweller settlements and empires. The suns were harsh and unforgiving, nothing like the dark blanket of the sky she had grown up with and even less like the soft orchids and violets of Galra ships. A faded and torn memory tugged at the edge of her mind, telling her that her mother had grown on a nightmare planet similar to this one.

After the first few days, Ezra only ventured out in the day for emergencies. If she did go out, she was always draped in the lightest wraps she could find to protect her final vanity from the environment. Just because she was without _true_ free will, didn't mean she had to look like shit. The unfiltered light also necessitated a pair of tinted, bulky goggles to protect her sensitive eyes from the day. It didn't matter how many times she'd complain about it, and she'd never stop; _Ezra_ _ **hated**_ _the sun._ And _sand._ It wiggled its _horrible_ way into all of the joints of her legs and pitted the smooth surface during sandstorms; _of which she now avoided in the safety of her hastily dug hole._

Her regulation body suit had been ripped to shreds during her previous assignment; an event she didn't want to linger on for too long, and the rags she had thrown over her body were half of what was left of her uniform and about three-fourths the coshtan* civilian's outfit she'd been forced to wear for her- _now dead_ -target's comfort. Undercover work wasn't her absolute forte, but it _was_ incredibly fun.

She'd taken to wrapping her ears in cloth she'd stripped from her undercover civvies to protect them from the biting sand. The protective fur lining the edges of her ears, meant to keep snow out instead of rock granules, was absolutely _useless_ in this environment. Their height was a flaw for once.

Her tube of paste was halfway gone. She'd have to make some out of the harsh, plasticy plant life if she didn't want her teeth to rot. MREs were only supposed to be a temporary thing, they didn't clean the mouth as tough textured rations did or actual food. MREs also called for a dangerous and ridiculous amount of water. She was never meant to have even _gone_ to a desert planet; the empire recognizes that their troops do have limitations. Scaled belly and hard, reptilian build didn't matter much when Ezra had a very _wealthy_ amount of fur. Water was to keep herself from dying of heatstroke during the day. Even the shadow that her hole in the ground had wasn't enough to save her from the blistering temperatures.

So, after the protein bars run out, _which she was rationing to the best of her ability_ , she'd have to go for a while without food, eating every three or so rotation cycles. She'd done it before...but that didn't mean she had to _like_ it. But, even during the event where she'd had to practically _starve herself_ to survive, water had been plentiful...

To get her mind off of her situation, _hoping beyond hope that she would be found and picked up from this barren hell_ , she studied the locals in closer detail than what her precursory, daytime glances had told her.

They were neither nocturnal nor were they sol-dwellers; they woke when their exhausted bodies would let them, and went out without care. She soon realized it was because the adult generation was blind while their children were not; the time of day didn't matter much when you were blind and had skin tough enough to make an _ion blaster_ look like a _toothpick_ in terms of damage. The elderly were eaten the moment their backs were turned. The only warning she'd had of _that_ happening was a short, gurgling scream before she rushed from her half-buried tent with an energy rifle in hand. _'Maybe those giant sand worms have begun to attack'._

 _If only_.

Ezra was no stranger to gore, having been dealt a niche in life that made her bosom buddies with death, but the level of savagery they utilized to tear into their elder was...For lack of a better word, _disturbing._

While the cubs, if they could even be called cubs, were naturally curious as all children were. However, any wandering from the tents got them a good thrashing and long strings of those whispering, raspy curses. Not a true language anymore, then. Children were protected by blind parents with scary senses of smell and hearing even though the parental unit must know that they, too, would one day be eaten by their children.

They had bowed legs, bulging eyes, bent backs, bumpy heads, and snaggled, gap-toothed, grotesquely curled mouths. The mangy fur on their heads and backs was the color of the empty dirt around them, but their skin was a mottled and faded green, suggesting that there were once forests on this planet that had provided them camouflage and shelter.

A relatively normal baby had been born sometime during her stay; she'd seen the pregnant mother ambling about with her shoulders hunched protectively over her protruding belly. Had wondered when she'd have her cub and what it must be like to give birth without anesthetic.

Ezra knew of its birth only because she found it's still cooling corpse outside of her tent by the time the sun had fallen not the day after observing the crag-like form of its bitch of a mother. The dark bruises around its eyes, nose and throat were stark against the rich green of their skin, tiny hands curled against its tiny chest, tiny feet limp, tiny _tiny_ _ **tiny.**_

She'd cursed and cried and _snarled_ as she dug a fire pit to burn the infant in. Not only were they all deformed, they were all _monsters._ Even the most _savage_ apex predator did not kill its young. These stupid, _horrible_ primates destroyed what was perfect and _innocent_ , smothering it in the midst of its quiet cooing and _helplessness_ and placed it in front of her sealed tent for her to find. As a peace offering or warning or religious rite, she wasn't sure. She wouldn't bother with finding out, either. She was done with the natives, and would watch them no more.

The ghosts of this planet were _haunting_ her. She could feel their mournful gazes and grasping hands in the early hours of morning.

Ezra packed up camp that night as the sun set, her grey-clad form bathed in the dying light of the day. She threw her supplies in the cockpit of the escape pod, attached ropes to a petrified piece of wood she'd found about half a mile away, and hauled ass at full speed for about two miles to the West to keep her eyes from the rising sun that she, unfortunately, could not avoid. Sand grinded in the gears of her prosthetics, the sound of which she ignored in favor of focusing on regulating her mechanic breaths.

 _The whistling silence of the hollow land grated on her fraying sanity and a baby's strangled cries followed her in the dark._

That death shouldn't have bothered her as much as it had, she'd been ordered to kill children before, but this...seemed _senseless_...

This planet was getting to her. It had to be.

The sanded husks of what Ezra supposed had been vehicles poked up from the hardened dirt every now and then. Broken, flaking spires of twisted metal were scattered in clusters, _monstrously_ huge rib cages and comparatively minuscule skeletons littered the landscape in grotesque piles. It all told her what she already knew; this planet was fucking _dead_.

 _She had to get off._

The camp she set up by time the next sun had started to rise was in one of the larger rib cages, her tent nestled in the space provided by the joint where blackened ribs met charred vertebrae. The bright violet of her distress beacon was her only light this time. The thickly cloying stench of decay wasn't here; fire would only bring the desert's beasts to her meager defenses and from what she'd seen in her rapid descent _(a.k.a. violent crash landing that she didn't think she'd live through)_ , these were animals one wouldn't want to tangle with. She doubted they could fit _one_ of them into the boundaries of the Emperor's gladiator ring. That was the _largest_ of the many scattered throughout the reaches of the empire.

So, she would sit, and she would wait for her masters to send a retrieval.

It would be a waste to let such an investment die from dehydration or starvation on some backwater planet, after all.

 _*coshtan is just a shitty substitute word i came up with on the fly for cotton lmao._


	9. The astral plane pt1

**AAAAAAAAAAA ok so i forgot how to do linebreaks again but I'm back? after more than a month lmao sorry yall. I havent written anything for Ezra or Shiro or really much of anything in a while and I had this baby floating around in my files for a while. Meant to post it a month ago but life got in the way...so if you're still here! Enjoy! Maybe!**

He was floating in starlight, cool and rushing. Faint screams breaking the monotony of his blanketed mind in increasing intervals. It was him and then not.

It all fell away and what it left was nothingness. It was dark. _Impossibly_ dark. He tried blinking, but the visions dancing in front of his aching eyes said the same thing. There was something warm at his back, moving slowly, breathing softly.

He turned, and his eyes met a pair he had grown to know intimately. Pale moon-gold stared back; unblinking and bottomless. Most of the Galra he remembered had flat eyes; hundreds of walls put up between themselves and what their bodies were committing. To the end, she remained true. Maybe that was why she had broken so thoroughly.

Ezra was turned in on her side to face him, huge body curling slightly over his.

He spoke, and yet, he did not. There was voice but it was disembodied from him. It came from the pit of his chest and not his throat; not his mouth. It scared him into silence as she continued to stare. Something in her own silence encouraged him to try again.

"What...what happened?" Why did his voice sound so _small_? So...tremulous?

She blinked slowly, her mouth did not open either. "You left."

He felt no panic, no anxiety in his bones over the statement, like it was something he already knew. Had already accepted.

"Left?"

Her head bowed closer to him. "Yes, left. As all things do, but not."

That should have scared him. _Left?_ Was he _dead?_ But still, nothing. In his belly, there was an emptiness that rolled bitterly. He didn't like it, but still, nothing. The others, he'd left the others alone...

"If I have left, have I left permanently?"

Her voice came from her belly and it curled warmly around him, there was a biting sorrow in its honeyed taste. "If you wish it."

Did he want to stay? He thought, still separate from his old guardian. It wasn't totally dark here as he had first thought. There were lights of soft, deep blues around them, swaying gently with a sweet wind. The ground gave, the scent of rich earth surrounded them. It was calm here...where had he been before?

It didn't seem to matter...

He curled into her broad torso. Ezra had always hated the unforgiving nature of her mandatory armor, preferring the softer knit of civilian clothing. She felt like _home_. Like a balm to his confusion. "And if I do not wish to leave? If I want to stay?"

Her arms came up around him, "Then stay, but do not forget what you leave behind, heart."

His face felt hot, his throat tight. He didn't want what he left, it was too much. He felt like a kid clinging to his mother's side at his dad's funeral again. He felt so _lost_. How could he lead, how could he dare to lie to their faces each day with his false smiles and reassurances, muffling his cries in the impenetrable dark of his quarters _. Too much_. The empire was so vast, and they kept striking like pit vipers at its throat. But the empire consumes even the venomous and revels in the epileptic fits poison brings. _Bright, vomitus colors rushing past in crashing ocean tides and-_ the grip Ezra had on him tightened.

"Peace, heart, and listen to what is around you."

There was...water. The soothing gurgle of a broad stream, the lapping of crimson against a smoothed shore, the rustling of the crisp, black vegetation against the gentle wind, faint music, Ezra's three hearts working in languid tandem.

If she was calm, so was he. All he had to do was listen.

The thrum was there again, that bite of sadness, the choking apathy.

"Are you the sorrow?"

"Just as you are."

"The apathy?"

"What you must never be."

He blinked back the tears in his eyes, sighing deeply to dispel the ache in his chest. "I think I'll go back."

Ezra hummed.

"Not right now", he answered quickly, "but…someday."

"There is always someday, just enjoy the quiet of now." Ezra's claws ran lightly over the stubble of his scalp, cradling him to the hollows of her rib-cage, "Time does not pass here as it does there. Stay as long as you like and return if you wish it. You are always welcome, heart."


End file.
